bwin Sportsblog - Other Sports - Horse racing in trouble?

The latest news to come out recently was that the bookmakers were halving their usual £100 million input into horse racing to £50 million. This already puts horse racing into even more trouble as trainers are going to find it very difficult to take their horses beyond certain distances or to take several horses if prize money dwindles. The problem for the UK bookmakers is that their turnover on horse racing has dropped alarmingly. There are clear reasons for this and one only has to look at the rise of internet betting and the range of non horse race betting options that people have inside betting offices. At the end of the day, people only have so much money to use on betting and once that is gone then they are finished for the day or even week. Online poker will have hit horse racing revenue as will any form of gambling that allows punters to gamble from their own homes. But in betting offices these days are numerous alternate ways to take peoples money. These include virtual racing and fruit machines all drag revenue out of horse racing and there is only so much of it to go round at the end of the day. It is my belief that although horse racing will not be allowed to die, it does need a huge financial input from somewhere to prop the sport up. I don’t have any answers but the problem is clear and it is to do with varied choice and too many choices for the average punter. This is the key factor here; people who only bet on horse racing will continue to do so. But young kids are being brought into a world where there is massive choice and numerous gambling avenues and the problem of dwindling revenue is not going to go away.